CLL cause found ~ single catastrophic chromosome event?

[Guest guest]

This study published in the journal Cell, suggest that CLL could be caused by a

single catastrophic chromosome rearrangement event.

Basically, something cause a chromosome to fly into thousands of bits and the

DNA

repair gets overwhelmed and reassembles the chromosome in a near random manner.

Normally a cell with this damage would die. But very rarely they survive and

clone. CLL and other haematological cancers result is about 25% of cases.

Possible caused of this one time catastrophic even. Researchers speculate

ionizing radiation or perhaps telomere damage.

The study looks at a CLL patient that had 42 rearrangements on chromosome 4q as

well as a 13q deletion.

Article: http://cllcanada.ca

Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21215367

~chris